Meet Dean Danny

by Faraneh Carnegie ’05

“Dean Danny” as students affectionately refer to him, became the first dean for diversity and academic advancement last July. A protégé of the late Edgar F. Beckham, Daniel Hiroyuki Teraguchi has an EdD in education leadership from Idaho State University and applied for this position after six years working with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). In his last position at AAC&U, Teraguchi served as associate director for the Office of Diversity, Equity and Global Initiatives and director of the Program for Health and Higher Education. His work on campus diversity initiatives at the national level has given him the ability to adapt a wide array of promising practices and apply research findings to enhance Wesleyan’s capacity to advance its diversity work.

Teraguchi was interested in the deanship at Wesleyan for several reasons. After several years of working in a consultant role with a team of experts for many colleges and universities, he wanted to have a long-term impact with an institution. He also passionately wanted to engage students in diversity work, institutional change, and leadership over their entire undergraduate experience, rather than episodic intervals through consultations. As he proudly proclaims, “I am a citizen of the community who is deeply invested in its development and care deeply about enhancing its capacity to create a conducive environment for students to thrive and pursue their interests and educational dreams.” Teraguchi was also was attracted to the position because of the connection between diversity and academic advancement stated in the title. “The relationship between the two is very powerful,” he says. “On one hand, diversity is the means to academic advancement, which puts the responsibility on the institution to sustain diversity as a process for affirming identities, fostering learning, building community, and cultivating leaders who are informed, active, and responsible citizens. This must be embodied by all in order to achieve academic goals/aspirations and provide conducive environments for facilitating the engagement of diverse students. On the other hand, academic advancement is the means to diversity, which changes the positionality of the learner. The learner—any member of our community—becomes responsible for understanding diversity as a process. The ownership is on the learner to advance their knowledge of diversity. Both relationships are necessary and create a dynamic process that fosters sustained development of the individual and the institution.”

Teraguchi fills a position that was created in response to students concerns about diversity and administrative transparency, presented in the winter of 2004. From information garnered in several campus-wide forums, the University recognized the need for the implementation of an Office for Diversity and Academic Advancement within the Office of Dean of the College. Wesleyan then created a Multicultural Affairs Task Force comprised of administrators, faculty, and students whose mission was to provide recommendations to the dean of the college, Marí­a Cruz-Saco, on the responsibilities for a new Office for Diversity and Academic Advancement. The committee embarked on a comprehensive process of gathering information on students concerns, including a review of past and current communication from students. The University affirmed the feedback from students during this listening and constructed a detailed job portfolio for the dean for diversity and academic advancement including: diversity as a systemic educational process for achieving institutional excellence; First Year Matters; the Student Academic Resource Network (SARN); academic success; disability services; academic and international components of orientation and the Office of International Student Services.

Despite the broad scope of his position, Teraguchi has managed to carve out a concrete and meaningful niche within the community in less than a year. He has created educational spaces in which students, faculty, administrators, and staff engage in difficult dialogues about diversity that seek shared goals to strengthen our collective commitment to social justice. He has held several discussions on campus climate and bias-related incidents in residence halls on campus, has presented to the Board of Trustees an institutional framework for diversity advancement, and has had several meetings with faculty, staff, and administrators, both individually and in groups, to discuss his role. As part of a team effort, he helped launched a campus climate log (www.wesleyan.edu/deans/climate) to catalogue acts of intolerance, as well as the resulting educational interventions and other discussions relevant to community building.

A colleague of Beckham’s unique and effective dialectic approach to diversity understanding and community building, Teraguchi asks tough questions that raise debates, tensions, and issues about critical topics in diversity, such as interrogating the notion of educational spaces in terms of safety and effective dialogue. So ingrained is this in his approach to dialogue, that he challenged me to consider my own actions and presumptions throughout the interview. Early on in our conversation, Teraguchi asked me to ponder my approach in requesting and conducting our interview to illustrate the importance of establishing and questioning process. “I stress diversity as a process, getting people to shift their thinking and consider the reasons they do things. Often the process of communicating is more important than the communication itself. I encourage students to consider the implications and symbols of their actions.” He also asks them to plan through the institutional goals and implementation strategies for each of their projects to demonstrate the impact on improving the campus climate and feasibility of sustaining each of their events.

Another way that Teraguchi succeeds in his approach with students is by grounding his theories and perspectives with examples, often very personal ones. This strategy encourages dialogue and prevents the interaction from being trite.

Teraguchi believes that the “diversity” part of his portfolio is exciting and full of opportunities to reflect his leadership style, philosophical approach, and passion and to have significant impact on the institutional educational mission. His goal is to provide the University with strategies to facilitate its growth by using diversity as a systemic, educational process. His theoretical foundation is: “entryways and convergence to diversity. We have a collective responsibility to create as many entryways as possible to diversity that taps everyone’s expertise, interests, and institutional leadership that converge on a common vision for diversity.”

I left our conversation frustrated and pensive, but with significant insight into the many ways in which I exercise my power on a daily basis. I can only imagine that it is this effect, multiplied by his myriad constituents, that constitutes Teraguchi’s impact on our community.